Dinner hit the table a little later than usual, so I took a while figuring out what the hell I was gonna do with myself this evening. I dialed around a bit and then looked at the Weekly, to see what was going on.

Miss Kitty's was tonight, but I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted. Something called Synthetic was tonight, but I wasn't feeling that, either. Finally, I decided on Underground. Since it (like the others) was free before ten, I made it there by half nine, telling myself that if it looked really lame in the next ten minutes I'd hustle down to Miss Kitty's.

Of course, all clubs are not only lame, but pretty much dead before eleven. So I looked around and figured I'd give the place a chance. It was about the time that I came that conclusion that I'd struck up a conversation with a girl from London named Hannah. She and her friend Katie were here on vacation and had spent the week doing the tourist thing. She was a movie buff, she said, and had gone around town looking at where various things had been filmed (the dance in Back to the Future, various shots from Swingers, the school from Grease, the diner from True Romance etc). She'd tried to find the bowling alley from Big Lebowsky and I had to explain to her that the big empty lot she'd passed on Santa Monica was, in fact, the site of it and that it'd been torn down. I wasn't sure whether or not to tell her about the motel from Pulp Fiction (also torn down), so I kept it to myself. We chatted a bit about music and she explained to me what the heck terms 'baggy' and 'shoegazer' referred to and how a flyer advertising a 'Manchester Revival' club evening was somewhat erroneous, given the bands they'd named (Stone Roses and Charlatans yes, not so much The Jesus and Mary Chain and so on).

Somewhere along the line, I found that I was wholly unprepared to defend the popularity of Robbie Williams.

Underground was doing a giveaway this evening and she recommended I grab one of the free CD's by Coral. Apparently it's all about track 4, so I'll be listening to that a bit later. I also grabbed their EP and a two copies of a sampler that just happens to have that song from the Mitsubishi commercial with the black guy driving while his passengers (and clothes) change randomly. I had gotten a Raveonettes CD, but some girl named Jackie absconded with it, either before or after she challenged me to a game of Go Fish with a deck of cards she'd gotten from somewhere.

By 11, the place was packed. They drank and smoked and I could tell they weren't all that into the club. They dug a few songs, danced a bit in the extremely crowded dance space, and I mainly hung out. It wasn't my scene and I'd already decided I was bailing as soon as they did.

That happened a little after midnight. They were trying to hail a cab, something I knew to be impossible, and so I offered them a ride. Of course, at that moment, a cab actually stopped. Maybe the rules are different in West Hollywood or maybe it's 'cause they were chicks, but I've never seen a living soul hold up their hand and get a cab in this town without calling for it first.

Hey, whatever.

So, yeah, if you're into the BritPop thing, Underground over at Tempest might be for you. I probably won't be back, but it was fairly interesting tonight.